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Money Money Money

So I hit level 40 at the weekend and found that the 2nd tier training manual is priced at 1g.

At the time, I had about 30-40s and while I try to save money, I do have to buy replacement gear as I level and general travelling tends to eat into my finances.

Now I'm at level 42 and I have about 70s to my name, so it's not a huge problem and I'll get my first gold soon. However it did make me wonder if there was something I was doing wrong, or maybe the lack of a trading post for most of my levelling had an effect.

I'm just curious how others have found their income working out for them, particularly what they can afford at the key levels like 10, 40, 60 and how much they had at 80.

I haven't run into any big troubles with money yet, although I have spent a good deal of money on gems (2400 gems in total, bought at low points of the "stock" curve). Most of that money came from area completions plus the corresponding renown heart quests which amount to quite a bit in higher level areas. I think so far I have sold two items on the Trading Post, a bunch of copper ore pieces (~125 I think it was) and a rare plant-like Greatsword, so I didn't get too much money out of that until now (I assume this will change rather soon when the TP is working reliably and I can sell the rest of my unneeded stuff there).

I also spend very little on armor or weapons and go with what drops and the odd deal at a karma merchant give me. Constant drains of copper and silver are repair costs (not too much, although it adds up), salvage kits (I salvage a lot of gear, stuff below 20-30 copper in value), and of course travel costs. I do however constantly use the shortcut through the Mists when I go to Lion's Arch and also try to find good compromises between costs and mileage when traveling larger distances. For example, I sometimes travel to the waypoint that is nearest to the area I want to get to instead of choosing the first waypoint in that are itself.

Another example would be the route LA -> Divinity's Reach -> Ebonhawke, which is a nice hub for exploring the Charr areas.

I made good money selling jute and T1 fines on the TP and I figure if you stockpile certain mats right now you'd make a profit later. You could also consider buying cheap dye for <1s per piece and hoping to transform into a more valuable dye.

I made good money selling jute and T1 fines on the TP and I figure if you stockpile certain mats right now you'd make a profit later. You could also consider buying cheap dye for <1s per piece and hoping to transform into a more valuable dye.

I heard mystic coins and locked lion chests sell well too.

It is what I am doing, just stocking up on all the fine crafting materials, as soon as stocks diminish price should shoot up, since they are pretty annoying to farm given the drop rates on most of them.

You buy replacement gear as you travel? I very occasionally spend karma on gear from the hearts, and that's it. When I bought the manual I had a little over 2g, and that's without ever selling anything on the AH. I sometimes sell blue gear to a merchant instead of salvaging it.

I am sitting at just over 2G, level 37. - Never used the Trading Post at all (like I could have, yeah...). - Never bought anything from a vendor for gold, only karma equipment updates. - Recycle everything that has cloth / leather materials, otherwise, sell it to a merchant. - Never use the waypoints (this one sucks balls). Repair equipment sparingly. So that's all the money I've earned on my character, except for the first skill book and a few silvers on repairs. I HATE waypoint travel costs, it actually impacts in a negative way my gameplay. I'd not care much for gold, but I really want to buy 3 additional character slots so I can play 1 of each profession, and there's no way in hell I'm forking about as much as full game price for the required gems.

On a related topic, can anyone explain what the deal with the Gold-->Gems exchange rate is? I read on the RPS review that this rate is not fixed but actually dynamic.
Does this means that when people earn more money, gems are more expensive (which basically means that gems will only get more expensive the longer the game exists), of is the price actually fluctuating?

Like Zanchito, i would at least unlock the 3 additional character slots (and maybe 1 extra bank tab so i can save some decent gear for them), and at the moment i can buy 2 slots if i swap all my gold for gems now. On the other hand i could use that gold to get the training manual when i hit 40 and 60. I figure that when i reach those levels i will make more money than i do now. Choices choices.

I've been salvaging almost everything for the first 10-15 levels before I realized it's not the way to go. Now I mostly vendor everything but some white/blue light/medium armor pieces that yield decent cloth/leather for selling (if only the TP was working...).

As for gear, I've been making weapons for myself and jewelry, but the rest of the items are from drops and rarely from karma (if there's a skin I like or a huge upgrade). All of the crafted items have been at the TP for vendor price +1c so to the vendor they went unless someone wanted them in /g.

Cut down travel costs by going through the Mists -> LA -> Asura gates as opposed to just double clicking that waypoint. The portal to Ebonhawke from DR is very handy for traveling to that eastern side for example. After going through the gates I take the waypoint to get me where I want to go though, so don't really be on the cheap side and not use them at all. After all, if you are walking you are wasting your time, which should be worth more than some virtual currency.

This strategy has netted me a comfy amount of money, I am 46ish now with around 3g after buying the second trait book.

I've been crafting all of my own gear so far and have pretty much only spent coins on salvage kits, gathering tools and a few teleports. I have also stopped salvaging metal and wood items (those resources can be gathered easily in large quantities) and sell them to npc merchants instead. Finally I have found that salvaging high level magical gear gives no better returns than base gear so I've been selling the ones I don't use off too.

To clarify: I'm not buying up-to-ate gear at every armor/weaponsmith I meet but, either it's my profession (ele) or just lousy luck, because some of the items I'm wearing are 10-15 levels old because I get very few drops that are relevant. So I buy the odd item costing 1-3s if it replaces something horribly out of date.

I'll use karma vendors if they're there but I have a full karma set I'd rather transmute than buy another (and have in fact been doing this spare transmutation stones since level 15 or so). Vain of me yes, but the stones were already free. The karma will come in useful later.

I think salvaging too much might be where I went wrong, as I did that exclusively up until the early 30s. I should TP/vendor a bunch of materials I'm not using from my bank.

Right now I'm sitting at 77s (level 53). However, when I turned 40 I had enough for the trait book and a respec of traits. Since then I spent about 2 gold on the lv 35 cultural armour for the Charr, because all leather was looking the same up till that level and I was bored of it. I regret that decision, because as soon as I bought it, the TP worked for me and I replaced the whole lot with (imo) better looking and better stated gear for a couple of silver. Since then I've spent a fair bit on repairs. Most of the money Ive gotten so far comes from WvW. You net tons of cash by doing events in a decent zerg, and the amount of loot you get from WvW is quite good, it can easily be resold/salvaged/mystic forged depending on your needs.

That said though, I've spent perhaps the last 20 levels pretty much solely in WvW, so I'm not sure if the rate I get money is fast or slow or somewhere in between. However, I am sitting on around 18k karma atm, having used 9800 on a cultural weapon at 40, and about 5k on random other stuff since I started the game. So in my experience, WvW is where the riches are.

Screwie: I was salvaging too much too until level 28 or so, then someone here recommended not to, and the money has been coming in a bit faster, although it's still not that great (for gem purposes anyway, for in-game stuff it's okay).

My 38 warrior has around 6g and my 34 mesmer has 3g. Around 2g of those come from selling chests, dyes and spare crafting materials on the TP. I think levelling two characters in parallel has made it much easier to keep spending down as I've had plenty of materials to skill up my crafting (armoursmith, weaponsmith, jeweller, cooking) in pace with my levelling and I haven't had to spend money on materials for the first three (beyond cheap lumps of tin), though cooking has been my biggest gold/karma sink so far. Armour and weaponsmithing especially seem to give a good surplus of money even when you vendor most things you make.

I'm still very low level for my main (24) but only have about 30 silver. Having said that, I think I should have more but have a lot less, for three main reasons:

- I suck at PVP and keep getting decimated and most of my cash goes on armour repairs.

- I'm a lazy sumbitch and teleport everywhere to save time.

- As some of you will be aware because I exploded over the guild chat the other night, I accidentally blew 25s on a cow race. Really.

So yeah, that's me!

I don't normally grind either but I've found one lucrative spot in the humie lands. I camp out in the area of the centaur invasion in Queensland and I make about 5-10 silver per assault. I just sell all the blues, greens and rubbish I get. It's made me quite of cash recently.

That made laugh to myself. I didn't even know such a thing existed in the game. Thanks for posting.

I blew 50s on the cattlepult bet when I was somewhere in my mid-20's, low 30s. I was really surprised at myself for being that stupid, but at the same time it was a learning experience because I didn't expect that to be an actual thing either.

As for my money situation, I would be so much better off if it wasn't for the TP and my compulsive need to level my crafting professions(despite never making anything I've actually used). Those fine materials are just absolutely killer when you need to buy 50 of each to hit the next tier of gear. It's almost impossible to level your crafting to be equal to your character level in terms of gear you produce. Or at least that's the case if you're leveling two professions at once; it might be different if you're only leveling one.

Just last night I blew about 70s on a whole bunch of new gear because, aside from my main weapon, all of my gear was at least 10 levels behind me and it was making level-appropriate areas feel like a slog. I just don't seem to get many drops that fit me, so most of it gets vendored or salvaged. Even my new TP gear isn't exactly fitting for me, but it's still better than what I was using. And the upside is that I'm sitting on about 25% magic find now, and from my short amount of time playing with it it's definitely helping.

As for making money, I usually salvage any light armors that I find because I need cloth for armorsmithing. I'll usually salvage medium armors too because leather is a bit tough to find otherwise and seems to sell fairly well on the TP. But any heavy armors or weapons I'll just straight sell because metal and wood are more than abundant. I haven't really had any armor or weapons worth selling on the TP yet, so most of my stuff has been vendored. I could probably make more money if I looked at the vendor prices of items before salvaging them, but I really haven't cared all that much as of late because it seems like any time I really need the money I have it.

One thing I've started doing is every time I'm in town doing my crafting/TP stuff I'll put almost all my cash into the bank and go back out into the wild with 5-6s on me. I've only recently started doing this, but in two deposits I've stored a total of 90s. And since it's in the bank it isn't staring at me every time I open my inventory window, tempting me to spend it. I just wish I had discovered the cash deposit in the bank earlier, but it's such a small bit down in the bottom corner of the window that I completely overlooked it, unlike how in GW1 it was a large portion of the bank screen and at the very top.

As for my money situation, I would be so much better off if it wasn't for the TP and my compulsive need to level my crafting professions(despite never making anything I've actually used). Those fine materials are just absolutely killer when you need to buy 50 of each to hit the next tier of gear. It's almost impossible to level your crafting to be equal to your character level in terms of gear you produce. Or at least that's the case if you're leveling two professions at once; it might be different if you're only leveling one.

I was feeling much the same until I realized yesterday that there are actually things I could make with my laboriously aquired crafting skills that sell on the TP for significantly more than their assorted component materials cost to buy on the TP. Cue an evening of trading, crafting and Top Chef-watching and my L35 warrior can now make the L55 stuff in weapon- and armorsmithing, has made herself a full set of L35 rares and carries 10g or so. I only stopped because the damned trading post went down again.

Even if you don't want to spend an evening or two playing Trading Hero - which is pretty understandable, a lot of people don't play games for the excitement and drama of refreshing your items on sale lists every 20 mins to make sure you've got the cheapest listing by 1c - you don't actually have to make stuff with fine materials to get the professions up. Look into the discovering the recipes for Sigils and Runes, they're generally made with 1 or 2 Rare crafting materials and a single ingot. Most of them wont sell all that well but the materials are (usually) cheap and they make getting past some troublesome tiers a lot simpler. Checking the TP to see what you can make that you can sell instantly at an okay price can also keep losses pretty manageable.